University World News reports that the world record for the longest lecture has been broken. Errol Tapiwa Muzawazi, a 25-year-old law student, clocked in at 121 hours. (According to the rules, lecturers are allowed to snooze briefly every hour.) Muzawazi narrowly beat an Indian professor who lectured for 120 hours in 2008. His goal? To raise awareness of the Millennium Development Goals.

Here's a coincidence that got me thinking: this week I came across the prototype UK site "Where does my money go?", the latest in a series of projects that aims to make government spending more transparent (see here and here for more examples).

The World Bank's Enterprise Surveys team has published a new survey of businesses in Eastern Europe, analyzing the long-term effects of the financial crisis in the region. The report looks at survey data collected last summer from over 1,600 firms in Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Turkey, finding that the crisis has had a detrimental effect on demand: